Listed property giant
GPT Group
is looking to bolster its logistics portfolio by acquiring a two-stage development in Berrinba, Brisbane, worth about $80 million.

The facility is for Toll’s company NQX, a leading provider of road transport for moving freight between Queensland, the Northern Territory and the rest of Australia, but is only in its preliminary stages and GPT is yet to finalise a deal.

The group could pick up the 13 hectares of land where the 42,000 square metre logistics facility is to be developed and reap $6 million a year in rent from Toll. The sale of the logistics asset would be the largest in several years in Brisbane and could be struck at a yield of around 7.6 per cent, industry sources said.

Savills’ Graham Hemingway and Callum Stenson are handling the asset in conjunction with CBRE’s Ed Bull. Both agencies declined to comment.

GPT Group has ambitions of doubling its industrial portfolio to $1.5 billion in the next couple of years. In August, it snapped up two logistics assets in Sydney’s west from a private developer for $53.6 million.

The group is aiming to lift its exposure to industrial assets from 9 per cent of its balance sheet assets to 15 per cent. The Sydney purchases lifted GPT’s balance sheet exposure to 11 per cent and the size of its logistics and business park portfolio to $959 million.

“GPT will continue to make selective acquisitions of high quality assets with a focus on the office, logistics and business park portfolios," group chief executive Michael Cameron said at the group’s interim results. He added that as a developer GPT was “building further capability for logistics and business park development". “This will help GPT achieve its target weighting, with the option of retaining or selling assets for a profit once this weighting is achieved," he said.